You'll find here a virtual machine for the latest available VMware Player 7 / Workstation 11.

What's inside ?

- generic amd64 build, should work on all hardware
- gentoo-sources 4.1.1, stripped down kernel config mostly based on pappy's kernel seeds
- KDE 4.14.3 full (kde-meta ebuild)
- latest VMare-tools already patched and installed. You get the accelerated vmwgfx video driver (pretty decent performance, multiple virtual screens, run the vm in a window etc), and shared folders with the host as the main benefits
- infinality : attempt to make fonts look pretty, not sure about the result though
- everything besides gentoo-sources and vmware tools comes from the stable tree

For what ?

Having a working gentoo desktop might come handy, as a reference. The rest is up to you.

Why KDE ?

A matter of personal taste, I find KDE to be more consistent over time. I know KDE is heavier, but all in all here the compile job is already done, your download time is just somewhat higher.

Unsupported software

It comes with what it means : you are the only one responsible for what you are doing with this software. But obviously it comes as clean as it can be.
Don't open bugs with this package, if you suspect anything try first with supported software / configurations.

Unzip, then open the .vmx file with VMware Player / Workstation.
Adjust CPU/Ram as your hardware allows, and answer "I copied it" to the question asked when you press play.
Network is configured as "NAT", and DHCP activated on eth0.
Adjust settings for timezone, keyboard layout (press the taskbar "fr/us" icon to switch between azerty and standard qwerty - sorry it was built in France -), and tweak your /etc/portage/make.conf and repos.conf to reflect CPU count and closest mirrors.
Stick to included kernel configuration for the following modules if you need to rebuild VMware-tools : vmwgfx (=m), vmxnet3 (=m), vmw_balloon (=m), pvscsi (=m), vmci (=m), vmmouse (=n)
Change passwords : installed accounts are user/user (autologin), root/root.
If you upgrade the kernel (within 4.1.x) you'll need to rebuild vmware-tools, for that use the patched version in the root folder (unpack, then run the executable perl script with option -d to select all defaults). For kernel 4.2.x or above, chances are that vmware-tools won't compile anymore (well, the hgfs module), then either you try to patch it yourself, or wait that I post an update (not granted).

Cheers

Last edited by hagar-dunor on Wed Jul 08, 2015 11:14 am; edited 29 times in total

-VMware player is free (home and non commercial use) for linux and windows
-their paravirtual drivers are upstream for some time now, and they add real comfort. I've been blown away by the performance of vmwgfx when running the virtual machine under a windows host

Anyway I don't want to turn this thread into a "what's the best hypervisor". The title says [vmware] and this is what you'll find here. If you want to make a package for another host, you're welcome to do so. Gentoo is about choice after all

Last edited by hagar-dunor on Mon Dec 09, 2013 8:25 am; edited 1 time in total

You seem to have some hard feelings about VMware But I don't want to have this debate on opensource / closedsource either, it's pointless. Whether you like or hate them, they continue to support OpenVswitch (at least for now) which is a major building block of the networking part of any serious hypervisor. Heck, even Oracle supports VirtualBox.

I use hardened gentoo on Xen (source) for my server needs, and currently learning KVM. I run quite a bunch of ESXi machines too. On the desktop I have a native KDE desktop, a native Win 7, and I currently like this "hybrid" setup of a Win 7 host and the virtual KDE desktop. Maybe it's just a step towards getting rid of Win completely, I don't know. On my personal desktop that could happen, but my company policies make that move more difficult on my work laptop. Anyway I wouldn't ever try to convince anyone that they should use this or that setup for their needs. I'm only saying (in my first post) that some people might find this image handy, nothing more. What I'm giving away here is the (relatively) painful process of integrating the vmware tools nicely, where most people would give up. Now for the eyecandy, vmwgfx is not far from being able to run a 1080p movie fullscreen, and once again I was really surprised by the speed and rendering of some games I tried in this virtual machine. I was considering PCI passtrough at some point, but I don't anymore, but then again it's only my opinion.

Try it out, make your own opinion, then throw it, continue to use it, or move to something else (well, Gentoo-ish).